Workers in California will soon receive a minimum of five days of paid sick leave annually, instead of three, under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Wednesday.
The law, which takes effect in January, also increases the amount of sick leave workers can carry over into the following year. Newsom said it demonstrates that prioritizing the health and well-being of workers “is of the utmost importance for California’s future.”
“Too many folks are still having to choose between skipping a day’s pay and taking care of themselves or their family members when they get sick,” Newsom said in a statement announcing his action.
Uhh… how is there not a guillotine in front of every state capitol building?
I burned out and have been sick for half a year. I’ve begun working a bit again (aiming for 9 hours / week).
Full pay throughout.
Do Americans not realize just how badly they’re getting shafted?
Too many boomers think it’s a necessary evil, because they used to be able buy a house with minimum wage.
“If I had to do it, so should you…”
I get that they screwed over every subsequent generation, but they’re all 60+ at this point. You can just beat them up. What are they gonna do? Be old at you?
More seriously, enough people are impacted by this that if you organized you could have activists hounding the elected representatives every hour of every day. E.g. drown them in lobby visit requests. Also just show up and knock on doors. Be disruptive. Your state is trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of you. It’s not acceptable.
Americans can’t even be bothered to vote. You think they’ll build a guillotine? 🤣
I’ve been fortunate enough not to have any major illnesses in my life to date, but the other year I had a bit of a breakdown in the office that turned out to be anxiety disorder manifesting itself, I took two weeks off to get myself straight and start medication, all paid. I can’t imagine trying to deal with anxiety, while also being worried I’m losing pay while doing so.
Do Americans not realize just how badly they’re getting shafted?
Most of us really don’t
Even though am not an USA citizen I can easily see how this situation can happen anywhere. Unless you have knee jerk reaction, a la France, to any law change and end up with protests on the street with cars burning and fighting with cops all of this can creep up slowly. Slight reductions over long periods of time and people will just ignore it.
Just to really drive the point home:
About half my salary is covered by the state. The rest is insurance.
That’s about $2800 I’m legally entitled to. If we assume 35% tax that gets me ~$1820 every month for 6 months while being sick that I’m guaranteed. Rent is ~700, so I’d have about $1000 for food and necessities.
I’m not sure you could get a closet to sleep in for $700 in California at this point
It’s social housing in the capital city. 60m2
Tenant democracy. No rent hikes unless it’s necessary or we want to take a loan out for renovations and such.
No, because there is way more to life than just emergency medical leave.
For most people they’re not going to be using that leave, they’d much rather have the money instead of it being taxed from them. Additionally it is much easier to get a job in the US and it generally pays better.
I don’t know what country you live in, but ones that have extensive labor protections often have very high youth unemployment (people with little experience can’t get hired), because businesses are unwilling to take risks on potentially bad employees if they can’t terminate them or have to pay out a lot of money to do so.
It’s popular to demonise America, but there are also a lot of problems the US doesn’t have.
I live in Denmark.
Overall unemployment is at about 2.6%
Youth unemployment is about 7-8%, which is lower than, or about on level with, USA from the numbers I can find.
There’s also way more to life than work.
We’re entitled to 5 weeks paid vacation, 3 of which must be consecutive if requested. Most people have an additional week from union contracts.
Parents have a collective 48 weeks paid maternity leave.
Don’t have to worry about homelessness. Don’t have to worry about healthcare costs.
You’re getting a raw deal, even if you don’t realize it.
Literally proving my point, Denmark had all these problems and then they privatised it, and created incentives for employment.
“Don’t have to worry about homelessness”
Neither do Americans. The vast majority of Americans will never be homeless, the vast majority of people who complain about it are rich kids on social media trying to get sympathy.
“There’s also way more to life than work”- The biggest factor in quality of life (in a wealthy country) is your job ( or less commonly your parents money). Also if you make more (and pay less in taxes), all those benefits can be provided from your savings. And your savings account is far more flexible than earmarked money from the government.
There is a reason why people want to work and live in America and not … Denmark. The ease to make money and the flexibility to spend it to maximise your quality of life is far greater than most countries.
I’ve been fortunate enough not to have any major illnesses in my life to date, but the other year I had a bit of a breakdown in the office that turned out to be anxiety disorder manifesting itself, I took two weeks off to get myself straight and start medication, all paid. I can’t imagine trying to deal with anxiety, while also being worried I’m losing pay while doing so.
